Vanessa Williamson

Vanessa Williamson studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and won prizes for opera, Lieder, French and English Song. She remains the only singer to have graduated with a first class honours degree and a distinction in the performer’s diploma.

Vanessa has an extensive concert and oratorio repertoire which encompasses familiar and less familiar works from the early Baroque to the present. She has been a soloist with many major orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony and the Bournemouth Symphony. A popular soloist with choral societies throughout Britain, she sings regularly in major venues and has performed at many summer music festivals including the Three Choirs Festival, Bath, Cheltenham and Chester.

Vanessa often performs throughout Europe. With Pro Cantione Antiqua, singing the Sorceress in Dido and Aeneas, she has toured in Poland, France and Italy. Vanessa has travelled throughout Israel on a tour with the Israel Camerata and sang the Verdi Requiem at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris. She has also sung Messiah in Beijing, China in 2007 in the Forbidden City Concert Hall. She is a soloist on a CD of Messiah on the Carlton label and also on a disc of Haydn choral works for Meridian. Recent CD releases include songs by Douglas Steele on the Campion label.

Vanessa also performs with the well-known Kegelstatt Trio in concerts with viola and clarinet. At the Purcell Room they premiered Voices in the Tide, a specially commissioned work by Paul Drayton.

Recent concerts have included the Dream of Gerontius for Brian Kay in Burford, Elgar’s Sea Pictures for the Ceramic City Choir, a programme of French Song for the Leicestershire Chorale and Handel’s Theodora at the Cornerstone Festival in Liverpool.

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“Vanessa Williamson’s song recital was a demonstration of excellence. Her voice is a most pleasing mezzo soprano – true, clear, effortless and beautifully produced. It is controlled by a cultivated musical taste and enhanced by splendid diction in German, French and English”The Daily Telegraph

“Vanessa Williamson is a mezzo soprano with full-bodied tone, unaffected warmth of heart, verbal clarity and frankness.”The Times